China Roses
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash, epilogue-compliant. After Scorpius is injured while apprenticing to Harry in his Countercurses business, Draco visits to determine how Scorpius is recovering—and whether he'll be staying. It also means the rekindling of a friendship that he had with Harry twenty-six years ago, which may become something more. COMPLETE.
1. Countercurses

**Title:** China Roses

 **Disclaimer:** J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

 **Pairing:** Harry/Draco, past Harry/Ginny and Draco/Astoria

 **Rating:** PG-13

 **Warnings:** Slight angst, non-linear

 **Summary:** After Scorpius is injured while apprenticing to Harry in his Countercurses business, Draco visits to determine how Scorpius is recovering—and whether he'll be staying. It also means the rekindling of a friendship that he had with Harry twenty-six years ago, which may become something more.

 **Author's Notes:** This is another one of my Wednesday one-shots, inspired by a request from sandersyager: _Scorpius apprenticing to Harry after Hogwarts as a spell inventor or other type of magical researcher. Draco turns up when Scorpius is injured in the course of his training. He and Harry haven't had much contact since 8th year at Hogwarts, but had the beginnings of a decent friendship that year and until Draco married Astoria and Harry went off to travel and train for his career outside of England. While Scorpius recovers (whether it's a day or weeks), Harry and Draco reconnect and realize they not only want a friendship but possibly a romance._ This will likely have five parts, and each part will be told partially from Draco or Harry's perspective (in past tense) and Scorpius's (flashbacks, but in present tense). The title comes from Enya's song of the same name.

 **China Roses**

 _Chapter One—Countercurses_

Draco had to pause with one hand on the glass door before he entered the sunlit building that contained Harry Potter's business, and not because he was worried about Scorpius. The latest owl—which Draco had no reason to doubt—said Scorpius was improving all the time.

It seemed even twenty-six years wasn't enough to shake the haze from Draco. The haze Harry Potter had carried around with him during the year after the war, the golden haze of miracles achieved.

Draco quirked his mouth as he opened the door. _I knew I was a fool. But I'm not as much a fool as my father._

Confidence re-established, Draco stepped into the light and looked around. The first thing he registered was the wall of roses climbing next to him. He could hardly breathe. They radiated their own haze, shimmering wildly cobalt and iris and hyacinth, bloodstone and alexandrite. Draco reached out one hand without realizing what he was doing.

Then he blinked, and realized they weren't real. They were made of some thin, transparent material, which vibrated with currents of magic cutting through them. Draco touched one anyway. It brushed against a perfectly-shaped leaf that turned and twisted as if in response to a wind, but the surface was too slick for that.

"Malfoy? Hello."

Draco turned, still dazed, away from the roses. Potter stood in front of him, and not even the small cuts and scars on his hands, nor the abrupt shagginess of his hair, nor the singed look of his face, all legacies of his profession, could dim the golden cloud around him.

"Potter." Draco cleared his throat brusquely, hoping it would force the renegade parts of him to behave. "I received your owl about Scorpius."

"And how he was missing his dad?" Potter smiled softly and nodded. "Well, I don't blame you for wanting to see him yourself." He turned on one heel towards the exit from this spacious, illuminated space, then hesitated. "One thing before you see him, Malfoy."

Draco, whose eyes had strayed again to the glory of the roses, tore them back hastily.

Potter looked at him and pushed the small silver glasses he wore up in front of his eyes. "Don't take him away unless you think his life is in danger," he breathed. "Please. He chose this work, and the work chooses him."

Draco narrowed his eyes. That comment knocked him back to his footing a little. Potter was charming and heroic and handsome and all that, but he was also someone who would submerge you if you let him. Draco had no intention of drowning. "What? You can't tell me you that _I_ have to make the decision? I thought you would tell me the work was safe and of course he should stay."

Potter silently held up his hands. "It isn't safe," he said simply. "I think it can be saf _er_. Scorpius made a beginner's mistake. He'll get past those." He paused. "But you have to do what you think is best for him. I understand that."

Draco shifted his cloak to his left shoulder. "Even as you're begging me to leave him here?"

"Even then."

Draco shook his head sharply. The contradiction of Potter's manners at the moment was too much for him, and he hadn't even seen Scorpius. "Lead on, Potter. Once I've seen my son, I'll make my decision."

Potter nodded, and opened the far door into another glorious workroom. Draco passed through it, eyes aimed straight ahead this time. As wondrous as some of the things Potter was building here were, his son was more important still.

But Draco did promise himself a lingering look when he left. There was no harm to Scorpius, or himself, in that.

* * *

Scorpius halts when he comes through the door and stares with his mouth open.

He's seen a lot of unusual things in his life. Unicorns bowing to his friend, Al Potter, after Al saved one of their foals. Hagrid, the giant gamekeeper, actually mounted on a hippogriff. The collision of two spells in the Hogwarts Dueling Club that somehow turned the students who had fired them into floating, crystal statues.

But he's never seen a man standing with a rose coiled around his arm like a serpent, rearing up, waving its leaves in the air, and the man smiling at the rose as though it was a beloved pet.

The rose sags as Scorpius watches it, and the life seems to flee its leaves and roots, leaving it a glittering sculpture. The man shakes his head and sighs. Then he leans the rose carefully into a container made of shelves that seems purposely built to hold it, and looks up.

Scorpius blinks, and carefully closes his mouth. Green eyes like that aren't worth gaping at. He saw the same shade most days of his life for seven years in Al's face, after all.

But Al, while he's brilliant at all sorts of things and already making a name for himself as an Auror, doesn't have the same—weight? Scorpius puts that word to it as the man crosses the room to shake his head. Harry Potter has lived through a lot, but he reminds Scorpius of one of those unicorns, accepting the weight of the horn on its brow and the expectations humans have placed on them with shivering grace.

Harry—he's told Scorpius to call him that already, through the letters they've sent back and forth—smiles at him in perfect understanding. Scorpius ducks his head, a little embarrassed that he's fallen into the same exact gaping admiration Harry must be so tired of.

"It's all right," Harry says. "I think it's pretty common to be impressed when you meet someone legendary." He lets go of Scorpius's hand, waves his, and makes shimmering protections fall apart and more of the workshop appear. Scorpius is actually afraid until he sees the wand almost concealed in Harry's hand.

"I was deficient in that, sadly," Harry continues as they move through the workshop into areas ornamented with stained glass windows, and more roses, and stacks of what look like steel wands, and statues of unicorns with upraised hooves. "It's hard to meet someone legendary when you're supposed to be the autograph-signer yourself."

He grins at Scorpius over his shoulder, which gives Scorpius the courage to swallow and ask, "But, sir, weren't you impressed by Dumbledore? I think—I think Al told me that once."

Harry nods thoughtfully and reaches out to pick up one of the steel wands. It's open with a slit on the top, Scorpius sees, so that he can make out a core of crystal inside. "I was. But I wasn't impressed the way someone would have been who grew up in the wizarding world and knew who he was. I only knew what the Chocolate Frog card and older students told me, really."

Scorpius tenses in surprise. Al told him that, he remembers distantly, that his dad didn't grow up in the wizarding world. But it's still strange, watching the natural way Harry moves around magic now—

With a little grimace, Scorpius realizes he's still apparently clinging to some of those outmoded prejudices that Grandfather Lucius gave him, without realizing it. He'd thought he got rid of the ones about Muggleborns never being fully at home in their world because raised outside it, but maybe not.

Harry glances back at him, seems to know what he's thinking again, but, with a little smile, doesn't call him on it. "You know what my business does."

"Yes, sir, of course," Scorpius says, glad to be back on familiar ground. "You come up with new countercurses to spells that don't have them. Your theoretical articles on defensive magic are _brilliant_."

Harry looks a bit startled for an instant, then smiles back. "Oh, yes. Well, thank you. But more than develop new countercurses, I develop ways to reverse the damage even to spells that already have counters. I mean, what good are the counters unless you manage to cast them _before_ the curse hits you, most of the time? You usually have to rely on someone else to free you or heal you if you're cursed."

There's a deep undercurrent in his voice that Scorpius doesn't understand. He cocks his head and asks, "So you're coming up with devices for people who aren't good at Defense on their own?"

"That's part of it." Harry looks at him again, and it's like being looked at by a falcon. Scorpius shakes his head a little, breaking that spell. "But what it is, most of all—"

He hesitates. Scorpius thinks for a minute that he must have heard someone about to come into the shop, but then he realizes what it must be.

"Oh, _please_ tell me," he says. "Please. I promise—it can't be sillier than some of the things I was thinking."

Harry blinks again, then smiles. Superficially, it's no different than the smiles Scorpius has seen so far. But he knows it's deeper, more real, and he's being admitted into something that most people don't know about Harry Potter.

"It's a way of taking away the evil of that curse," Harry says quietly. "And my devices can be used independently of curses, not just to counter them. So you can use one of my golden falcons not just to reverse the pain of the Cruciatus Curse but to ease someone into deep relaxation even if they've never had an Unforgivable cast on them." He pauses one more time, then adds, "It's a way of bringing beauty back to the world."

Scorpius never forgets that moment, standing there surrounded by china and glass and gems and silver, all the various materials that Harry Potter forges his Countercurses out of. It's the beginning, in many ways, of his real life.

* * *

"Right through here." Potter was in front of him, drawing back a sheer silk curtain. Draco blinked, especially when Potter added, "Scorpius, I told you to leave the unicorn _alone_ for right now."

Draco half-expected to see a unicorn standing in the room as he strode in. But Scorpius was drawing his hand back penitently from a tiny statue instead, which stood in the center of what looked like a miniature dais.

"Sorry," he added to Potter, who shook his head in fond exasperation. Draco knew what that looked like, having gone through it many times himself.

"Here he is," Potter said to Draco, and waved his hand at the bed. "Nearly scalped alive by a crystal explosion because he's intemperate and thinks he can handle things that _I_ needed to train years for."

Scorpius flushed. Draco studied him, reaching out to catch his son's hand in silence. Really, the worst injuries were on Scorpius's leg and not his head, long cuts that had smaller puncture holes next to them, but there _was_ a deep scratch curling around Scorpius's ear that you could take as half-scalping if you were imaginative.

And Draco had a room full of roses as evidence that Potter was imaginative.

"And," Potter continued, in the same tone, so it wasn't immediately obvious what he was going to say, "the best apprentice I've had in fifteen years, with a natural feel for defensive magic that's going to make him famous someday." He glanced at Scorpius and shook his head. "Which is why I'd prefer not to see him scalped first."

Scorpius flushed and then smiled, a flood of color and light that rivaled anything Potter had produced, for Draco. He held out a hand to Potter this time, and Potter moved around the other side of the bed and took it.

"I'm sorry," Scorpius said. "I really thought I was holding the tension in the crystal in check."

"We all _think_ lots of things," said Potter, but he was smiling again. "Which is why I need you to keep control of your thoughts and concentrate on your imagination instead. At least for right now."

Draco looked from Potter to his son, who was smiling much the same way. He and Potter still each held one of Scorpius's hands, one on either side of the bed.

A powerful movement stirred in Draco's chest like a thunderhead. He got rid of it by dropping Scorpius's hand and conjuring a chair that would appear by the side of the bed.

 _Trying_ to conjure a chair. Draco felt his magic sputter out against protective enchantments he hadn't even sensed.

"Oh, sorry." Potter gave a little frown and reached out to touch a different unicorn on a different dais. "I forgot that I'd guarded the room against magic." He turned the frown on Scorpius, who squirmed. "Because otherwise _someone_ would be practicing it when he's supposed to be resting."

Draco glanced at the unicorns, but chose not to say anything for right now. He conjured his chair instead, and sat down in it. "Tell me how the accident happened," he said.

He put a tone in _accident_ that Scorpius must still have known how to read, because he surged upright. "Oi!" he said. "You don't think Mr. Potter would have done this to me _on purpose?_ I thought you two got over being enemies a long time ago."

Draco glanced at Potter before he responded. Potter only gave him an impish smile back, which wasn't the most reassuring response, and conjured a chair for himself.

"I didn't mean to imply that," said Draco stiffly, holding Potter's eyes for a second before he turned back to Scorpius. He felt off-balance. He spent most of his time in his library or his friends' libraries, researching the books he wrote on history, and books talked to him only inside his head. "I didn't."

"Then _what_?"

Scorpius was leaning forwards in a challenging way, and Draco clasped his shoulder this time. He might smell dust more than fresh air and hear silent words more than spoken ones, but his son was still the dearest thing in his world.

"I thought you might have pushed your boundaries deliberately, for an interesting result," said Draco. "Not lost control. Jumped."

A choked sound came from Potter, abruptly enough that Draco tensed. But it was only Potter rocking back and forth with a hand over his mouth and the other one pointing straight at Scorpius, who slumped against his pillows.

"That's an accurate description of _him_ , all right," said Potter, and raised his voice into a falsetto. "What does the crystal do when I push on it? It explodes? Well, are you _sure_? Did you try it with a Blasting Curse? What about this one?"

Scorpius turned even brighter red. "Shut up," he muttered.

Draco sat straight up. He had raised Scorpius better than to speak to someone he'd apprenticed to that way.

But once again Potter didn't react how Draco had expected. He only shrugged. "I'll shut up if _you_ do, and I never have to hear words like that out of your mouth again."

"I'm still waiting for a description of what exactly happened," Draco interjected, and tried making his voice plaintive, to see what effect it would have.

Potter reached out and picked up the small unicorn beside him in response. Draco automatically tensed, but apparently this one didn't control the room's magic when it wasn't on the dais. Potter turned it over and held it out to Draco. Draco found himself accepting it the way he would have a young Ashwinder.

"See the slit in the belly?"

Draco concentrated, and made out a sapphire-bright sparkle running between the unicorn's delicately molded, prancing legs. He nodded.

"I leave a slit like that on all my countercurses, to funnel magic into." Potter leaned back in his chair. "Each of them needs magic when I create them, to mimic the effect of whatever defensive or healing spell I'm designing them to imitate. You can strengthen the spell, and that strengthens the final creation."

Draco considered the slit for a moment. "A small aperture, to funnel all the magic."

"It works fine," Potter said, with a dismissiveness that Draco found irritating. " _If you know what you're doing_." He turned around abruptly and scowled at Scorpius.

Scorpius held his hands up. "I only wanted to test and see how much the crystal could hold. You _are_ using smaller slits and smaller creations than you really need to, you know. You could strengthen them if you were willing to strengthen the magic—"

"I do, on a regular basis," said Potter, in a voice that made Draco picture sudden, common arguments, most of them over a mug of mead or something similar. "What I _don't_ do is slam the magic through a slit too small to hold it, into a crystal structure that I'd already destabilized by casting spells directly on it, while holding an artifact that's supposed to pump more power through the core of my wand."

Draco found himself turning almost mechanically to Scorpius, feeling like a toy on a pivot. "You _what_ ," he said, and his voice was flat.

He knew exactly what artifact Scorpius must have used. He didn't really _want_ to know it, but he did.

Scorpius squirmed worse than he had at any time since he was a child and Draco had caught him making the house-elves steal biscuits for him from the kitchen. "It's not—I sort of forgot I was holding onto it with one hand," he muttered. "I was so deep into the casting trance that I went with my instincts and used the incantation, and, well."

He gestured at the cuts that covered him. Draco sat back with a long, slow exhale through pursed lips that made Scorpius duck his head and peer up apprehensively.

"You're past the age when I could confine you to your room or take your wand away," Draco finally said. "I admit, I came because I wasn't sure whether I needed to stop the allowance I give you for your apprenticeship fees—"

"You _can't_! It _wasn't_ his fault!" Scorpius flapped a hand at Potter while not removing his glare from Draco.

"Yes, I can see that now," Draco said, and pondered for a moment whether he should say what else had come to mind. He decided, with a glance at Potter, that he had to. Potter, watching him with calm, unsettlingly intelligent eyes, even made a small gesture as though encouraging him to go on. "But I thought that might force you to quit this apprenticeship and concentrate on less dangerous work."

Scorpius blinked, mouth open. Then he said, "So it was a punishment for me, not Harry."

"Yes." Draco clasped his hands in his lap. "I always thought it would be. Scorpius, I approve of what you want to do with your life. I _don't_ approve of how you go about it."

"You told me there was no one finer to study with than Harry Potter," Scorpius whispered accusingly. " _You_ were the one who encouraged me to apply for an apprenticeship!"

Draco felt as if he'd been dipped up to the neck in hot coals, but he didn't need to look at Potter right now. "I know," he said. "But perhaps I should have encouraged you to wait until you were older, and better able to control yourself."

"I'm nineteen!" Scorpius tried to sit up, but then winced and fell back against the pillows, probably because he'd rubbed his cheek in a way that made the cut around his ear pull.

"And so, young and reckless by definition," Potter muttered, shaking his head. Draco finally felt safe to look at him again, only to find that Potter was gazing at Scorpius anyway, and didn't stare at Draco the way he'd expected. "Scorpius, I took you on because of your talent and because I do think you're going to make great discoveries. But I can't have you endangering yourself."

"It was an _accident!_ I didn't mean to be touching the artifact at the same time!"

"It was a Malfoy heirloom, right?" Potter turned to Draco at that point. "One you lent him for his protection when he came here?"

Draco resisted the impulse to simply shrug. In truth, having seen how calm and peaceful Potter's sunlit studio was, he felt foolish for doing that. But then, London had seemed so different and dangerous from Hogwarts or Wiltshire, where Scorpius had spent most of his time, six months ago. "Yes."

Potter nodded once at Scorpius. "You might not have meant to be touching it when you cast the spell. But why did you have it out if you didn't intend to use it?"

Scorpius's head drooped a bit. Draco waited, blinking slowly to conceal his surprise. It was like, and yet not like, the way Scorpius usually reacted when Draco or his mother—on the rare occasions he still saw Astoria; she lived in Spain now—scolded him. It seemed as if he might repent more genuinely now, for one thing.

"I was only going to see how it worked with a small spell," Scorpius finally whispered. "Not a big one."

Potter nodded in a way that said that was the right answer. "And if someday you want to make your own creations with bigger slits for the magic, well, that's your responsibility and one that I hope to teach you enough theory to handle on your own," he said, and leaned forwards to pat Scorpius's knee. "But you can't create those things yet. You have to be careful. Even beyond the chances of an explosion when you use a powerful spell, you know what the Ministry regulations say."

"I don't," Draco interjected, while Scorpius only nodded and looked miserable. He'd been aware that Scorpius needed to fill out a lot of paperwork for the Ministry when he took on this apprenticeship, but that had been Scorpius's responsibility, and Draco had left him to it.

"Because I create things that counter curses," Potter explained, and turned to face Draco, "I have to know the actual effects of the curses. Sometimes I even have to cast them, because there are magical resonances that simply can't be learned from books or casting spells in the same classification. For some, like the Unforgivables, there _are_ no spells of a similar classification. I need a special license from the Ministry to do that, and I have to swear an oath not to use them on living creatures, only enchanted dummies. So did Scorpius."

"And he will if he opens a similar business," Draco said. He frowned at his sneaky son. He hadn't known that, no.

"Not only that," said Potter. He swept back his hair from his scar, in a motion that Draco once would have seen as a need to distinguish himself and remind people of his fame, but now he thought he could see it for what it was: a simple means of showing who he was. "The backlash of a spell on a human being might count as casting the spell on a living subject."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Potter," said Scorpius, in a voice as small as the crystal unicorns. "Did I get you in trouble?'

"I still have friends in the Ministry." Potter smiled at Scorpius, gently again. "I didn't even have to pay much of a fine, once I'd explained what happened, and let a few key people study a Pensieve memory."

"I'll pay that fine back," said Draco, and frowned again at Scorpius.

"You don't have to, and don't look like that," said Potter. "Scorpius didn't know until just now." He stood up, slowly. "It might take another week for Scorpius to recover. Were you thinking of staying in London while he did, Malfoy?'

"I—" Draco was about to explain the convenient nature of Floos, in case Potter had forgotten it with not having one here, and then looked from Potter's face back to his son. "I understand there are some houses with lodgings in Diagon Alley. I could, couldn't I?" The notes he was taking on the rise of Grindelwald were safe under a complicated lock at home.

"Oh, no need for that," said Potter easily. "I was thinking you could stay with me in the flat upstairs. For now, Scorpius really needs to stay here." He reached down and touched the crystal unicorn in a way that seemed to make the air shift. Scorpius visibly slumped back and sulked.

"I," said Draco, and this time let it fade away on its own while he looked at Potter. Potter looked back, his gaze calm and steady.

Draco could read many messages in that gaze. Maybe not all of them were there, the same way he might open a history book hoping for confirmation of something that turned out to be his own imagination.

But enough was there that he nodded and said, "You're kind to offer, Potter. Thank you."

"You're welcome," said Potter, and smiled in a way that made Draco think again of those roses in the outer room, complex and glittering.


	2. A Curtain of Roses

Thank you for all the reviews!

 _Chapter Two—A Curtain of Roses_

"You like roses, don't you?" Malfoy asked, but in such a soft voice that Harry could have ignored the question if he wanted to.

He didn't want to. "Yes," said Harry, and waved his hand. The curtain of deep blue glass roses, strung on silver chains, that guarded the entrance to his flat swung back and forth in response, and Malfoy blinked and turned his head away as though he would find something less dazzling to look at.

 _Good luck,_ Harry thought, amused. The rooms of the little flat held sheets of glass, and delicate china bowls, and worked gems waiting to be pried out of their settings on brooches and rings, and all the other raw materials he used to make his countercurses. The drawing room and the dining room spilled indistinguishably into each other. Malfoy wandered around as though he was looking for firm boundaries.

"Hungry?" Harry added, picking up a silver toasting fork that already had a slice of bread stuck to the end of it.

Malfoy gave the bread a politely horrified glance. Harry grinned. "It's only been sitting out a few hours. With Freshening Charms on it."

"Perhaps I will not," said Malfoy. "I brought some food."

"You did? Really?" Harry shook his head, bemused. "Well, it's probably not as fresh as mine. Or don't you trust my magic?" he had to add, as Malfoy opened his mouth for what was probably going to be another refusal.

"I trust it." Malfoy was darting his eyes around in the old paranoid way. Harry was fascinated by how little he'd changed since their eighth year at Hogwarts when they had put together a sort of friendship. Of course his career and his family life were different, but his tells were still the same. "I—would not leave guardianship of my son in the hands of someone I didn't trust."

And that was a big admission for him to make, Harry realized. Harry smiled a little and nodded. "I knew that, actually."

"Oh." Malfoy looked as if he had no idea how to pick up the conversation.

"Let me feed you." Harry didn't smile this time, and that seemed to make Malfoy listen more closely. "I have fresh dewberries. More bread that hasn't been sitting out. A huge wedge of white cheese I've hardly made a dent in."

"Simple food." Malfoy made the statement and then watched Harry as if it was a test.

 _A test of how I respond to it, anyway_. Harry merely nodded. "I like to live that way," he said. "If nothing else, every time I go over to someone's house it's like I get a feast." Most of his friends either had house-elves, a fascination with cooking, or an interest in making sure that they had the best food for guests.

"I have no objection to food not cooked by house-elves," said Malfoy. "I simply…" He sat down in the one chair Harry always kept clear for guests and frowned at a blanket woven of Demiguise fur as if he was trying to decide what it was.

 _Don't know what to say when we haven't seen each other in so long,_ Harry supplied silently. He might have been the same way, but running Countercurses meant he had to see a lot more people on a daily basis than a history author did.

"You're not used to it," said Harry. "I understand." He ignored the next politely horrified glance he got, probably because he had talked about it instead of avoiding the subject, and went into the kitchen.

It took longer to find a knife capable of cutting the cheese and bread than it did to arrange the food, and then Harry carried the huge wooden plate back out. Malfoy had reached out to touch a dragon's scale shimmering on the table near the chair, but he jerked his hand back.

"None of the things up here are dangerous," Harry said. "I would have warned you if they were." He cleared some amulets off a table to have room for the plate and started to arrange the berries.

"I wasn't afraid," said Malfoy. "It occurred to me that it might be impolite."

Harry glanced up with a smile that he didn't bother to hide. "Do you remember what you said the exact same thing about?"

"There were no dragons' scales in Hogwarts," Malfoy began. Then he spun around and faced the fire as if that would help excuse the blush crawling up his cheeks.

"No," said Harry calmly, and was happy that he had the task of cutting up the cheese now to hide his shaking hand. It had no reason to shake. He glared at it, and it calmed. "But there were other things that might have been glad of your touch."

He held out the plate to Malfoy. It took him a minute to notice, and he swallowed half the biggest chunk of cheese on the plate, as if he wanted to make sure that he would have even more excuses not to talk.

Harry sat and watched him. Malfoy had reminded him of Scorpius at first; since he'd been around Scorpius for months, he was Harry's frame of reference now. But he could see the differences when he looked closely enough.

Malfoy was taller, or wore his height in a different way. Harry had never met Astoria Greengrass, only seen her from a distance, but he knew she was the source of the difference. Scorpius could bend in all sorts of ways and twist and use his height to reach upper shelves where Harry would have had to Levitate things down from. Malfoy walked as though nothing would ever make him bend or twist, and he would thank people not to think such degrading words around him.

And Malfoy's face was finer in its bones than Scorpius's, and his hair was nearer white than gold. Harry asked himself, quietly, if Malfoy was handsome, and received no answer back from the echoing emptiness inside him.

That had more to do with Harry himself than Malfoy, he knew. He had rarely thought much about having someone to date in the years since Ginny. There was magic, and his friends, and clients to wrangle with, and apprentices to train—although no one who had ever shown as much promise for it as Scorpius. Harry sometimes felt he was lucky to get his bed to himself. Someone else would have taken up time even there.

"Potter?"

Harry stirred, blinked, and came back to Malfoy. "Yes?" he asked, when he saw Malfoy staring at him as if he had said it more than once.

"You looked so far away there." Malfoy was hunching up his shoulders in his best defensive style, turning his head slightly to the side. "Sorry for startling you if you were daydreaming."

"Even if I was daydreaming, it's impolite to do it with a guest around," Harry said, and smiled to ease whatever sting was making Malfoy look at him as if he'd stepped on a trapdoor. "Now." He leaned forwards to pour more tea into Malfoy's cup. "You're satisfied that Scorpius can make a career out of this?"

"Making a career is different from thinking he's safe, which I do think." Malfoy took a long swallow of his tea. "What could he do if you're already selling these things and have control of the market?"

Harry waved his hand. "Oh, I've never trained anyone to directly succeed me, of course. What I'm doing is giving them the skills to create their own magical objects. Scorpius is talking about doing artifacts."

Malfoy narrowed his eyes and set his cup down. "Artifacts are defined by their rarity, Potter."

"Right now, they are." Harry sipped some more of his own tea, hiding his smile. He'd thought Scorpius had talked about this with his father, but it appeared not.

"Artifacts are also subject to high Ministry regulation." Malfoy spent a moment playing with the cuff of his robe. "Scorpius would have to spend a lifetime proving they're safe and filling out paperwork."

"I don't spend a lifetime at it, but paperwork takes up a portion of my time every day." Harry tilted his head to the side and smiled a little winsomely at Malfoy. "I have to prove that my new countercurses are safe and that the Ministry doesn't need to spend all its time coming down here and examining them."

Malfoy blinked once, like a lizard on a wall. "So you're training him to do some of the paperwork, as well?"

"Training him for _his_. He can't help me fill out mine. Unfortunately," Harry added wistfully, thinking of how much time he would save if he could have had apprentices do that. But the Ministry had forms that were enspelled to resist both the writing of anyone except the person who was supposed to fill them out, and duplication charms.

Harry suspected someone had adapted either one of his spells or Hermione's to produce paperwork like that. He supposed he couldn't really blame them, as annoying as he found the results. It _was_ both impressive and useful.

"You're strange," Malfoy said, but he was frowning in a gentler way now. "You think he can make a career of this. Really."

Harry nodded and looked at him. "Once he stops trying to combine artifacts he doesn't understand with power he doesn't understand."

Malfoy's smile was slow in coming, but rich as late afternoon light when it did. "A less fatal lesson than it could have been."

"Yes," said Harry. He was feeling warm and relaxed and contented now, and he leaned back in his chair and sipped some more of the tea. "Did he tell you about what happened the first time he met one of my Killing Curse shields?"

Malfoy choked on a dewberry and sat forwards with his hands dangling next to him. "No one can resist the Killing Curse."

Harry slowly placed a hand over his heart. "Seems to still be beating."

Malfoy shook his head. His face was pinched around the eyes, and he was sighing out hard, like he had a bellows in his chest. The thought crossed Harry's mind that he would have been a good crafter, if he could look like that when he was doing some of the work. "That's not what I meant. No one can _block_ the Killing Curse."

"I'll be able to, when the shields are done."

"Tell me."

There was so much hunger in Malfoy's face. Harry stared at him for a moment in wonder, and then decided abruptly that he knew the reason. Malfoy's art was history, the same way that Harry's was defensive magic. He was probably thinking of the way history would change once Harry's shields came into common use. Or _could_ have changed. Who could have survived.

The realization softened Harry's voice as he began the story.

* * *

Scorpius checks over his shoulder before he shuts the door. He can feel his breath coming as short as it did when he and Al sneaked up to the height of the Astronomy Tower and cast a net over the side that would support them if they jumped.

Then, he and Al were going to pretend to the dramatic desire to jump, and then pretend to actually do it, to frighten some of their stubborn Housemates who wouldn't shut up about Al not belonging in Slytherin. Now, Scorpius is going to do something worse.

No pretense. Reality.

And Harry is nice. Wise. Wonderful to work with, and watch when his magic is wreathing around glass and gems and bringing them to life. Scorpius can admit that without flinching.

What he _can't_ admit is the way that his own magic burns in him and kicks him beneath the heart when he lies awake in his bed. He knows why Harry wants to go slowly. Scorpius was glad of it in the first weeks when he handled all sorts of magic and materials he'd never thought existed.

But Scorpius knows he is ready, now. He can feel the magic lapping out to welcome him when he comes into Harry's "conservatory." It's reaching out for him right now, as a matter of fact, as he walks through the walls of roses to a small, sheeted dais at the far end. Harry uses those miniature daises to showcase all the countercurses that he actually sells in the shop, and even ones that remain experimental or just for him in his home.

But Scorpius hasn't been allowed to approach this one. Harry has told him what it is. A shield for the Killing Curse.

He won't show Scorpius how to work it, though. He keeps saying Scorpius needs more practice with lesser magic first.

Scorpius does _not_. No, he hasn't managed to cast the Killing Curse or any of the other Unforgivables yet. He at first didn't know how Harry could, since Grandfather always taught him that it requires intense hatred and cruelty.

Then Scorpius saw the compassionate, detached expression on Harry's face when he first made a dummy of wood and cloth writhe with the Cruciatus, and now he knows. Harry can force himself through the spell because he's thinking of all the lives he'll make better with his solutions.

Scorpius reaches out and rips the silver sheet back. It falls on the floor and makes some of the roses ring softly in the wind of its passage.

Looking back at Scorpius is an actual _shield,_ also made of silver. Scorpius blinks. Most of the time, Harry shapes his countercurses in the forms of living beings. It seems strange he would choose a simple object.

On the other hand, depictions of dragons and snakes crawl around the edge of the shield, and they have small garnets and topazes for eyes. Scorpius nods, reassured. Harry hasn't gone far adrift from his usual magic in making the shields, then.

The middle of the silver disk is blank. Harry told him why. He'll place the central control slit and a rune he's developed at the center of the shield when he's ready to perfect them.

Right now, they're not perfected. This is the most complete shield Harry has ever made. He's told Scorpius over and over again how focused the emotions and magic that make the shields have to be, to create a thing that can turn the Killing Curse.

But Harry's as cautious with himself as he is with Scorpius. He keeps stopping to rest when Scorpius knows he could go on. He makes those little slits in his countercurses and feeds in the magic a drop at a time, instead of a gushing torrent.

He could do more. Scorpius tells himself that. He's doing this for Harry as much as for himself. Maybe Harry will see how much more he could achieve now, and will look at Scorpius with eyes full of wonder, and turn to a real _challenge_.

Scorpius picks up the shield. It feels heavier than it should, but he's used to that with Harry's other countercurses. He lays the shield gently down on the floor, and then bends over it and begins to focus his magic. He's going to complete the shield, not by casting the Killing Curse at it but by the reverse process.

He has the most powerful Shield Charm he's ever cast just building up inside him. He hasn't used any defensive magic for the past week, telling Harry he wanted more time to study theory. Harry seemed a bit suspicious, but only a bit.

And now Scorpius can use that stored magic, and show how he can force and focus it to his will.

The sparks are leaping off his fingertips by the time he opens his eyes again. All around him, Harry's roses are stirring slightly, their leaves curling and waving. Scorpius ignores them. They literally couldn't hurt him even if he made them all explode and fly all around the room in whirling shards of glass and china. It's not in their nature.

He stands for a moment, forming the word with his lips, aiming one hand downwards at the shield. Then he nods, and the sparks all coil up and around him, as ready to strike as one of Harry's healing roses.

" _Protego!_ " Scorpius roars.

The shout drags all the magic out of him, shaping it around the sounds of the word. Scorpius hears his heels scrape as he lurches forwards, pulled by the power. He gasps aloud, and the wind seems to catch up even the sound of his gasp and drive it into the shield.

The eyes of the dragons and snakes begin to glow, gold and red. Scorpius leans forwards, his own mouth starting open as he stares at the shield, and his shoulders ache with excitement.

The counter-blast blows him off his feet, and across the room, and out the door, and into the foot of the stairs, where he gets to see the bottom of Harry's robes swinging as he runs down them.

"That wasn't supposed to happen," Scorpius says, blinking up through fuzzy eyes at Harry, and then he falls into unconsciousness to escape the pain that he can feel coming.

And the moment when Harry's expression will probably change to one of disappointment.

* * *

"…and he didn't understand that there was a reason I had told him not to mess with the shield." Harry sighed and sat back, shaking his head, one hand playing for a second with the side of his sleeve. He could still remember the way he had felt when he saw Scorpius lying on the floor and recognized the tendrils of magic crackling around him.

"What did you do?"

Harry blinked and looked up. Malfoy was pointed towards him, his hands extended. Steam had stopped rising from his teacup. Harry held out his wand and heated the tea again.

Malfoy only gave him an impatient glance, as if he thought the way Harry was acting was meant to put off the moment when he could answer the question. Harry sighed and answered. "I put him to bed and let him heal. And then I told him the reason he'd survived."

"Which was?"

"The roses in my conservatory are meant to be the counter to Blasting Curses," Harry explained. He had told enough customers this that the words fell naturally from his lips. "Not just blocking it, but _cushioning_ things." He paused, and saw Malfoy's expression, and stopped talking to him like he wanted to buy roses. "If he'd tried to pump magic into that shield in any other room in the house, he never would have lived. The backlash would have killed him."

Malfoy leaned back and picked up the teacup again. His mouth had gone flat. In fact, his whole face was flat.

"Are you all right?" Harry asked quietly. "Regretting allowing Scorpius to come here?"

He posed the question as lightly as he could, but he could feel a flutter of anxiety in his stomach. Malfoy might or might not want to be friends again. Harry was actually stunned that he'd agreed to stay and wait for Scorpius to recover. If he took Scorpius away, though…

It was the most important bond Harry had ever had with an apprentice. But he couldn't contest Malfoy's right to be a concerned parent. Harry would have felt the same way if his children's overconfidence was likely to get them into similar situations.

"I'm amazed that he lived," Malfoy said flatly.

Harry swallowed a little. Yes, it sounded like Malfoy would insist on a dissolution of the apprentice contract immediately.

"And that you _kept_ him here." Malfoy shook his head. "I was under the impression that this accident was the _first_ of its kind." He stared at Harry. "And you say he has talent?"

Harry started laughing before he could help himself, though he choked it off when he saw the almost crystalline hardness that had taken over Malfoy's face. "Honestly, yes, he does," Harry said. "I wouldn't have kept training him after the shield incident if he didn't. But he does need to learn how to be less reckless." He thought about it, then grinned. "How to have more reck."

"I will, of course, be removing the Malfoy heirloom that I allowed him to borrow," Malfoy murmured, "since he seems to have inappropriate ideas about what he's allowed to do with it." He seemed to be thinking deeply. "What else can we do?"

"About?"

"Protecting him from himself."

Harry cocked his head. "I think he will be careful after this, at least. I'll say this for Scorpius, he never makes the _same_ mistakes."

Malfoy shook his head slightly. "Not good enough. You put your trust in him, and he's nearly killed himself, destroyed products you were working on, and set back your research."

 _At least I know what's most important to him by the order he puts things in._ Harry caught Malfoy's eye and held it. "Listen," he said, as gently as he could. "I _was_ angry with him. Yes, that shield took months of work, and I had to start all over again. It's one of the reasons I can't put the shields on the market right now. But in the end, Scorpius matters more. I want you to know that."

"He's my son. Of course he matters to me."

"And he's my apprentice."

Malfoy considered him. Then he said abruptly, "I would have forgiven Scorpius likewise for destroying my books or notes or something else I needed to write. But I'm not only his father. He's nineteen now."

Harry snorted a little. "And you think that makes him immune to stupidity? You're thinking like _him_ now."

"By the time you were nineteen," said Malfoy, "you'd won a war."

Harry stared at him. Malfoy looked at him, but a faint blush had stolen into his cheeks. Harry blinked his eyes more and more rapidly, realizing something. Malfoy had acted much the same way around him when they were at Hogwarts in their eighth year.

 _Malfoy envies me. Or is in awe of me. Or was. And he compares what he's achieved to me._

"It's permissible for ordinary nineteen-year-olds to be a little stupid," Harry said, and his voice was very soft. Malfoy seemed to know why, because his mouth shut with a click of teeth.

But he didn't glance away, which Harry thought was brave of him. He went on. "I think Scorpius is within the bounds of acceptable stupidity. I still want him to be my apprentice."

Malfoy sat considering it. Harry tried to subdue his own impatience and curiosity, and sipped more tea. He'd made the best case he could. Ultimately, though, Malfoy was Scorpius's father and the one who had paid most of the necessary fees.

"I think he needs to be here," Malfoy said. "However, I disagree that he never makes the same mistake twice. It sounds like, at _least_ twice, he made the mistake of thinking he knew better than you how much power to handle."

Harry paused. He hadn't thought of that before, because the theory behind the shield and the theory behind the crystal unicorn seemed so different to him that they'd made the accidents Scorpius had with them different. But he could see it from Malfoy's perspective now.

"Go on," he said, and leaned back in the chair again.

"I think," said Malfoy, "that we need to teach him a lesson. Scare him a little."

Harry blinked. "I—well, I can see your point, but I don't think I could still have a mentorship bond with him if I lied to him."

"You don't need to do a thing," Malfoy almost crooned. "I'm his father, and I'm the one who studies history. I can draw on a thousand examples of parents who had to do things like this and teach their children better." He touched Harry's wrist. "Let me do this."

And Harry felt his own flush mounting his cheeks as he watched the spark in Malfoy's eyes.

 _There is something here. And not because he's Scorpius's father or could have been my friend two decades ago._

 _Something I want._

Harry had a lot of experience in getting what he wanted. There was a roomful of china roses downstairs that said that.

But he doubted any countercurse would be of use to him when pursuing Malfoy. He would have to try other methods.

 _Well. I think I'm still pretty bloody creative._


	3. A Crystal Dragon

Thank you again for all the reviews!

 _Chapter Three—A Crystal Dragon_

"What's he doing?" Draco kept his words soundless. Potter was close enough that he should be able to read Draco's lips, anyway. They stood together outside the silk curtain that marked the beginning of Scorpius's sickroom.

Potter bowed his head and concentrated senses that Draco couldn't feel for a moment, then gave a breathy snort that mostly tickled Draco's nostrils. "Trying to use magic again, pushing against the room's spells. He's _such_ a wanker."

Draco jerked his head around in surprise. Potter winked at him. Draco found they were standing closer than he had thought they were, and found, too, that his curled hands were brushing against the front of Potter's robes.

He leaned back and closed his eyes. Potter didn't chuckle or do anything else about his discomfort that would make him an arsehole. He just burned lightly along Draco's front, then said, "All right, he's stopped now. You remember your lines?"

Draco found it easy to roll his eyes this time. "How many hours did we spend drilling?"

"Only one, actually."

In the faint light through the curtain, Draco could easily spot Potter's raised eyebrow. He flushed. He should have spoken in terms of times rather than hours. But it was too late to retrieve the situation now, and he would only make himself look stupid if he tried.

"But I know them," he said.

"Good," said Potter, and held the curtain away from the alcove the way that he had yesterday. Draco ducked through in a far different mood than he had then, however, his heart light and skipping around the inside of his chest.

"I told you," said Draco, and as he spoke the lines became fitted to the natural tones and dips of his voice, the way Potter had told him they would become, "you don't need to create a countercurse for every Dark spell out there. In some cases, the existing counter serves just as well."

"And I told _you_ ," said Potter, with a little sulky toss of his head that Draco immediately suspected him of copying from Scorpius, "that my countercurses go beyond holding the Dark spells back. They provide something extra. It's not blocking Cruciatus pain, it's leaving you deeply relaxed. It's not blocking a spell that might have made delicate components explode, it's preventing any magic so a patient can relax in peace." He turned his head, inch by clockwork inch, and looked at Scorpius.

His son was flushed in a way Draco had never seen him at home, but he was also lifted from the pillows on his elbows. "I need _something_ to do here, Harry," he explained. "And it might as well be working."

"I could have brought you books of theory!" Harry brought down his hand on the edge of the bed, and Scorpius jumped. "But no, you have to push and push and push at the boundaries." He turned away from Scorpius and scowled at Draco. "At least your theory is correct, though."

"Of course it is," said Scorpius, and his eyes darted between them as if he expected one of them to start firing hexes. "I'm an expert on defensive theory. You wouldn't tolerate someone who wasn't."

Draco marveled at how well Potter knew Scorpius. He had reassured Draco that his son would say something exactly like that, giving Potter an opening for his next line.

"But it seems I'm forced to, given who I told he could stay as a guest here." Potter scowled at Draco and turned away, launching a kick at the bed. "If I'd realized what I would be doing when I agreed to that…"

"Um." Scorpius laid his wrist on his forehead and peered at Harry around his fingers as if he thought something would pop up soon to make Harry change his mind. "Of course he's not a defensive theory expert. He writes history."

 _And you don't need to make it sound so dusty either, Scorpius._ But Draco bit his tongue. He minded his son thinking he was a fool in front of Harry Potter more than he'd realized.

More than he _should,_ when he was the one who had come up with this plan. Potter was merely the one who'd figured out how to execute it.

"He's decided to tell me how I could correct my countercurses, though." Potter folded his arms and turned so that most of his back was to Draco. "And which ones I don't need to make. I suppose he knows _all_ about that, now."

 _He does offended well._ Better than he had in their practices upstairs. Draco only narrowed his eyes, though, instead of apologizing as his instincts told him to. "I don't want my son to waste time or effort on things that aren't needed."

"It wouldn't be _his_ time or effort."

"It would, if he could spend it learning with you and you instead waste it on making countercurses no one wants." Draco moved to the side, keeping Potter in his sights. "I've paid for an apprenticeship that it seems, so far, has only endangered him. And not taught him _nearly_ enough, if he thinks messing about with artifacts and countercurses at the same time is a good idea."

"No, Father!" Scorpius was thrashing around now in the blankets, his face totally red. "That wasn't Harry's fault! It was _my_ mistake!"

Draco slowly shook his head. "Potter told me last night that it happened more than once. I don't think so." He faced Potter again and held out a stiff arm. "I'll take my son from here. I'll show him how he can live a life that incorporates magical theory and all the things he wants to do without creating useless countercurses."

"Ultimately, Scorpius is an adult." Potter had achieved the cool tone that he'd told Draco he would use, but one hand opened and closed in a way that Draco knew Scorpius would note, or the boy had severely backslid in his lessons. "He can choose to stay."

"If I stop paying his apprenticeship fees?"

Potter gave him a level stare, and Draco knew why. This wasn't a part of the pretense they had tried on each other up in Potter's rooms. On the other hand, Potter should have known better. Draco had to make the objection once he was in the room with Scorpius thrashing around making noises like a distressed seal and trying to get him to stop. It was obvious, even though Scorpius couldn't get the words out, that he was mostly worried about the fees.

"I think he has talent enough to train him without that."

Scorpius seemed to be torn between blubbing his gratitude to Potter and yelling at Draco not to take him away. Draco sniffed. "Well. Let me _show_ you why you'll need more common sense than you have to succeed. And so will he."

He gave Scorpius the kind of quelling glance that made him shut up for a bit, and in the meantime, Draco pulled out his wand and cast. Potter's wand moved at the same instant, and so did his lips, but he had told Draco the major effort would come from one of his countercurses, slipped into his pocket. Scorpius wouldn't immediately realize the effect was an illusion even if he saw Potter casting. He'd just think that Potter was trying to stop Draco's spell.

A shimmering curtain of silver light appeared in front of Draco. It was mostly illusion, but part of Draco's conjuration, too. Draco had added the part that was hopefully going to scare Scorpius out of ever acting stupidly around powerful artifacts again.

Draco gave Potter a triumphant look. "I suppose you know what this light does?"

Potter folded his arms. "Shocks you by throwing you into the wall. But you don't need to worry, Malfoy. I have a countercurse that can stop it." This time, he drew out a small crystal dragon that he'd shaped into a coiling shape, reared on its tail and haunches. He held it up as if he was going to thrust it into the light.

Draco smiled a little. "But I'm going to show you the countercurse, the _actual_ spell, can work just as well. In fact, let's have a little contest, academic theory against common sense. Bring your dragon to life."

" _No_ , Father!"

There was fear in Scorpius's voice, but not enough. Draco was sure it was still fear of losing his place at Potter's side, not fear of what might happen to someone using powerful, unpredictable magic against more unpredictable magic. Potter nodded, said, "You're on," and touched his wand to the inevitable slit in the dragon's belly. It promptly whirred its wings and climbed up to hang above Potter's head.

" _No_!" This time, Scorpius's voice was a bellow. "You told me you hadn't tested that dragon yet, Harry!"

"Well, this'll be a test, then." Potter's eyes were on Draco and the light, and he didn't even glance up at the dragon, the picture of confidence in his creation. "Since the tendency to think you can do things better than me runs in the family…"

"I never—I _never_ thought I was better than you, Harry—"

Draco interrupted the fumbling apology before it could get started. Scorpius had to mean it. "On the count of three. Well, three for you and five for me. You need time to use the dragon, after all. Time I don't need to cast the spell."

Potter's face twisted in feigned hauteur, and he touched the dragon again and whispered something to it. It rose higher, and then Potter said, "Start counting, Malfoy."

"One," Draco said, and the dragon soared straight towards the curtain of light.

"Two." The dragon was almost there, wings flapping harder and harder, small mouth opening.

"Three." The dragon's tail whipped over its back and magic flowed out from that and from its jaws, expanding in a gleaming silver cone.

"Four, _five_ ," Draco counted quickly, and flung the "counter" at the curtain of light, nonverbal, because Scorpius didn't need to know what spell he'd actually used.

"No, Father! What that dragon's supposed to do—"

The explosion ate Scorpius's warning, and the light, and Draco's sight. He felt his legs leaving the floor, and hoped, as he flew, that Potter's cushioning properties on the wall were all he had promised they were.

Then he struck.

* * *

"You have so much talent, Scorpius. But you need to learn how to restrain yourself."

Scorpius stares at his hands. Then he stares at Harry. But the flat look he gets in return encourages him to go back to looking at his hands.

"I was only trying to help," he whispers.

"What's the first theory you learn about finesse when studying defensive magic?"

Scorpius looks up quickly, because the yielding tone in Harry's voice might imply he's going to forgive him. Harry, though, stares over Scorpius's head at the far wall. His gaze is bored. Or unreadable. But either way, implacable.

"You learn that finesse is important because there's a fine line between defensive and offensive magic." It's Scorpius's own answer, the right one but in his own words. He realized quickly when he first came for the apprenticeship that Harry doesn't tolerate simple quotes from textbooks. "If you put too much power behind a Shield Charm, it could hit someone and kill them. Or fracture at the wrong place instead of bending and let a curse through and kill someone sheltering behind it."

Harry nods and turns a distant eye on him this time. Scorpius sits very still. They're in Harry's flat, a place Scorpius usually sees when they share a quick meal and then bolt back downstairs to work on another countercurse. This time, though, Harry stands in front of Scorpius as judge and jury, not sitting across from him and gulping tea the way he's always done before.

Scorpius thinks he's seeing the Harry who was in the war for the first time. He doesn't much like the experience.

"You learn that," Harry says. "All the students who go through defensive magic training during their lives learn that. But you don't _apply_ it." His hand comes down in the middle of the table and makes Scorpius and teacups both leap backwards. "Do you."

Scorpius realizes a second later that this isn't a question, but a statement. One Harry thinks is true of _him_.

He straightens up and let his haughty Malfoy stare rest on Harry. It never worked on Grandfather, but it works sometimes on his parents. Mother seems more susceptible to it with every visit, in fact, as though living in France has got her far enough away from Malfoys to forget about it.

Harry never flinches. In fact, a slight, cold smile touches his lips. Scorpius doesn't ever want to see that smile again.

"Your father used a better one on me, many times in school." Harry takes a slight step forwards. "And I was never worried that _he_ jumped headlong into danger. Try something other than looking like a sulky teenager to make me forgive you."

"I'm _not_ a sulky teenager!" snaps Scorpius, firing up despite himself. He knows Harry gets him angry on purpose sometimes, to test how his reflexes and perceptions change under the threat of extreme danger. But he doesn't deserve that test, not now, not when he's been passing all the other exams Harry set him, even the impromptu ones. "You should know better! Would you let a—someone sulky play with all the countercurses you have?"

"If I thought he was an adult." Harry's voice is low and precise. "Until he nearly killed himself experimenting with a shield that he knew wasn't ready yet, and meant to deflect a spell he can't cast yet."

Scorpius's eyes drop. He did think Harry had forgiven him, the way he'd picked Scorpius up from the landing site and cared for him for a few days. He understands now that Harry didn't want to yell at him until he wasn't wounded any longer.

 _Or until I could understand what I did._

"I didn't mean to," Scorpius begins.

"And someone not properly trained in defensive theory, or finesse, wouldn't mean to cast a Shield Charm that hurt the people it was supposed to be protecting." Harry moves closer and closer to him, never taking his eyes from Scorpius's. It's ruthless and terrifying, far worse than any Malfoy glare. "It wouldn't change the nature of their deaths."

"I didn't die! I didn't hurt anyone—"

"Anyone _else_ ," Harry says, and his voice rings and rises in a clamor that reminds Scorpius of the noise of the shield hitting the floor. "I told you I never had to worry about your father jumping headlong into danger. Well, that's a trait I'd wish you'd _bloody inherited!_ You _idiot,_ I sat by your bed pumping healing magic into you and wondering what in the world I was going to tell your parents, why I'd ever told you about the shield, why I'd taken you on as an apprentice—"

"You did it because I was talented!" Scorpius protests. "You said so yourself."

"You have to be talented at staying alive, too." Harry moves even closer and peers down at him like an angry owl. "I had to learn that after the war. To hold my life lightly when the prophecy and the hunt for Voldemort was on, because it turned out I might have to die to kill him. And then to hold onto it harder when that hunt was over, because my life had value." He pauses. Scorpius is almost sick with the vertigo of his own heartbeat. Harry never talks about the war, never. "Has anyone ever taught you to hold hard to your life?"

"I'm not suicidal," Scorpius breathes. His throat burns as he says it.

"Not in your mind," Harry says, and his eyes have turned somber again. He reaches out and shakes Scorpius's shoulder, hard enough to rattle his tongue in his mouth. Scorpius doesn't mind, because it's gentle compared to the way he shook Scorpius after he woke up. "Has anyone told you they'd grieve if you died? _Anyone_?"

Scorpius tries to think over his life, whether a genuine announcement would have happened anywhere, and then he snorts. No, of course it hasn't. Because his family and friends never assumed he was suicidal.

But when he tells Harry that, with a little twist of his voice that he hopes will make Harry realize how stupid he is to assume Scorpius _is_ suicidal, all that happens are Harry's brows drawing together. Scorpius sighs and settles in for another lecture. At least, after this one, he thinks all Harry's anger will be exhausted.

Instead of lecturing, though, Harry gestures around the room. "Do you know when I learned enough to set up Countercurses?" he asks.

Scorpius frowns. He doesn't know the exact date, although of course he knows Harry has been in business long enough to train several apprentices and sell a lot of his counters. "No," he finally says, when he's kept silent long enough to convince Harry he's searched his memory rather than simply never known.

Harry leans forwards. "When I was thirty. That was the first age at which I felt I'd learned enough defensive magic. But it's also the first one at which I felt as if I had a hard enough hold on life."

Scorpius blinks. "I don't understand." He hates it every time he has to say that, but at least Harry is generous with explanations.

"If I had given up my life during the war, I wouldn't have my three children," Harry says, and his face glows with his smile. "But I also wouldn't have lived long enough to do this." He gestures around the shop again. "And if I had started the shop before I'd learned a proper respect for how powerful the magic was, I would have died during some of my first experiments." He leans even closer, until his eyes look as large as the shield did. "To make those future artifacts, Scorpius, you have to survive your first encounters."

Scorpius hesitates. He _knows_ that. He never had any intent of dying as he wrestled with the shield.

But he realizes something else, suddenly.

He never had any intent of not dying, either. He didn't take the shield seriously. It couldn't threaten him. He reckons that was what Harry meant when he talked about respecting the objects.

While Scorpius is blinking at that and wondering why he never considered the shield a serious threat, Harry does something else to seal the moment in his mind. He reaches out and touches Scorpius in the hollow of his throat, almost compelling his attention. With a wizard as powerful as Harry that close to your pulse, you _do_ , Scorpius has found.

"And I would have lost the chance to train you for this apprenticeship," Harry says quietly, "if you'd died early."

Scorpius can't speak. He reaches up and catches hold of Harry's hand, and they sit-stand there for a moment in silence. It's a promise. Scorpius is never going to be so disrespectful of the shields again. He'll leave up all development on them to Harry, at least until Scorpius gets good at the Killing Curse. He _promises_.

And he does live up to his promise. He leaves the shields strictly alone.

* * *

"Father. Father, _please_ …"

Draco blinked. He thought he was doing a pretty good job of imitating the dazed condition that would come from someone being cast into a wall. He groaned and touched his head slightly for that effect, too.

"Father!"

And maybe he had done too good a job of scaring Scorpius. Draco sat up, still blinking. Scorpius's face swam into view above him.

"Oh, thank _Merlin_ ," Scorpius said, and then hugged Draco hard enough to make Draco instinctively hug him back.

Of course, he wished he'd been a bit less demonstrative the next minute, because Scorpius turned on Harry with his wand drawn. "Why did you do that?" he shouted. "You know that you're more powerful magically than Father is, and you—you know that he doesn't know all the defensive magic theory that you do—"

"Oh, no, Malfoy," Potter said, and there was an audible grin in his voice. "Your theoretical competence has been impugned. However shall you cope?"

"I'm sure I'll manage somehow," said Draco dryly, and stood up, stretching his neck back and forth so that the vertebrae popped with alarming sounds.

"Father?"

Draco turned towards him and said, " _That_ was meant to be a vivid demonstration of what happens when you use a lot of power and direct it towards something you don't understand. Did it bring the point home?"

Scorpius froze for a second with his mouth open in a vivid kind of protest. Then he slammed it shut and scowled at Draco. Draco stared innocently back, but with something lifting in his heart. That was more acknowledgement, more open emotion and less respect, than he'd had from Scorpius in years.

He could see why Potter valued the relationship that he'd built with Scorpius.

"You were _testing_ me? Fooling me?" Scorpius's voice was dangerously low, and he stared back and forth between Potter and Draco as though he was deciding who was to blame for this betrayal. "Why—"

"Because I finally realized an important distinction you must have made when you promised that you wouldn't interfere with the shields again."

Potter's voice was stern. Draco turned around and studied him. He stood tall and sturdy, all his attention and discipline on Scorpius, and Draco found himself disinclined to interfere. His son wouldn't collapse because of a little scolding.

"You only promised not to interfere with the _shields,_ right?" Potter continued. "You never said anything about crystal unicorns, or all the other countercurses that I have around the place."

Scorpius's face turned an absurdly shiny, reflective pink. Draco hoped that he hadn't looked the same when he was blushing last night.

"I just—I knew what I did wrong with the shields," Scorpius mumbled. "I didn't think I would do the same sort of thing again."

"And if this situation had been real, I'm sure that your father wouldn't have meant to respond to the Lightning Gate with a charm that would cause it to strike out," said Potter severely. "But he did."

"That wasn't a Lightning Gate?" Scorpius gaped at both of them. Draco found himself smiling before he thought about it. It wasn't for this purpose that he had suggested the game, but he found himself thinking it was rather fun to fool someone who knew more defensive theory than he did.

Potter shook his head. "No. I had a countercurse in my pocket, one of the lions, that raised a curtain of light that will simply bounce someone who touches it into a corner without the shocking effect of the Lightning Gate. Your father cast an illusion spell at the same time that would make it look a little more like an actual Gate. Then he used a spell that mimics the human touch and so bounced him into a corner. And my dragon…" He reached up and touched the small crystal dragon that had returned to his shoulder. Draco hadn't seen it do so, but then, he'd been rather busy having his view blocked by Scorpius's concerned face. "That provided another illusion full of explosions and sparks."

"That's _defensive_?" Scorpius looked more than a little outraged.

"It's meant to give the effect of fireworks at parties, more cheaply than buying actual fireworks would do." Potter's face went remote again, and he turned to Scorpius with his arms folded. "How did it feel to see your father bounced into a corner with no control over what was going on, and in fact, no _knowledge_ of whether he was dead or alive at first?"

There was a silence. Then Scorpius went red. "Oh."

Potter nodded. "I would have been impressed if you had recognized the differences between the illusion and a real Lightning Gate and therefore neglected to be concerned. But you didn't." He was really staring Scorpius down now, although Scorpius seemed to be writhing more from his own thoughts than from that. "Neither did I recognize that you weren't badly wounded from the crystal unicorn you tore apart at first."

"I'm sorry," Scorpius mumbled.

Potter smiled, and his tone became lighter. "Not only do you endanger yourself and worry me and your father when you do that, but you set back my work, and you neglect your own defensive theory. You _should_ have known more about the shield and the crystal unicorn and the artifacts you use than to think they'll work when you do something mad. Do you promise to be more careful now with all the objects you'll encounter in this line of work, not just the shields?"

"I promise." Scorpius smiled. "If you'll show me what spell the dragon is supposed to be a countercurse to."

Potter laughed. Draco saw the way Scorpius's eyes shone, and found it hard, for that matter, to take his own eyes from Potter.

He _did_ look away before he could be caught staring. At least, he thought so. But he found himself, as Potter herded Scorpius gently back to bed and started scolding him for not even noticing when Potter had touched the crystal unicorn on the right side of his bed to permit magic in the room, wishing that he could stay longer than the few days it would probably take Scorpius to recover.


	4. A Pile of Golden Illusions

Thank you again for all the reviews!

 _Chapter Four—A Pile of Golden Illusions_

"I think he's doing better than he was," Harry murmured in an undertone to Malfoy as they sat in the corner of Scorpius's room. Scorpius had once again curled up and gone to sleep, his face haggard.

From the tilt of Malfoy's head, he knew Harry didn't mean Scorpius's wounds. "Do you think having both of us scold him was the reason why this one took, and the last one didn't?"

Harry shook his head. "I think he finally felt that worry himself. He never did for his own life." He rolled his eyes and focused for a second on Malfoy. "Do you know why that is? I mean, I know why _I_ was stupidly reckless, but Scorpius didn't have to fight a war."

Malfoy's face was pensive for a second, as he stroked the length of wool Harry had let him have. Malfoy had said he knew a few unique enchantments that Harry might be able to incorporate into a countercurse, if he let Malfoy have a neutral material to cast on. He lowered his wand now and stuck the tip into the wool, and Harry watched in fascination as a blue-and-white star bloomed. That certainly wasn't a spell he knew.

"I don't know," Malfoy murmured. "I thought that he might have been influenced by his friends, but his closest friend was your son, and Al is cautious."

"At least about making sure that he wasn't caught," Harry muttered.

Malfoy glanced at him sharply. "Are you saying that Scorpius _did_ do this kind of recklessness at school?"

"Let's say that Al was probably more honest in his letters home to me than Scorpius was to you." Harry leaned forwards. "Does jumping off the Astronomy Tower sound familiar?"

Malfoy turned a shade paler, although honestly, with his coloring it was sort of difficult. "What?" he whispered.

"They strung nets to catch themselves before they did it," Harry explained. "But they were pretending that they'd had enough of this cruel world because the Slytherins wouldn't stop mocking Al for being Sorted into Slytherin instead of Gryffindor, which they thought would have made more sense for him as the son of two Gryffindors."

Unexpectedly, Malfoy frowned instead of yelling. "Anyone who can't see that your son belongs in Slytherin is an idiot. I'm ashamed of the quality of students my House is producing nowadays."

Harry hid his smile and said, "But at least it proves that Scorpius's love for danger didn't start when he became an apprentice to me. Do you know why it did?"

Malfoy spent a moment more enspelling the hank of wool, and then sighed and put it down so it mostly dangled off his knees and he could play with the ends of it. Harry held his peace. He thought the spells Malfoy had put on it would probably keep it safe from casual unraveling.

"I don't remember him being that reckless in his childhood, no," Malfoy said. "And neither Astoria nor I would ever have encouraged it in him."

"Your father?" Harry didn't know much about Scorpius's relationship to Lucius Malfoy, only that it had happened, and Scorpius seemed both repulsed and longing for those days.

Malfoy snorted. "The one chance for his line to continue? He became resigned early on to the fact that neither Astoria nor I wanted another child. My father would have wrapped Scorpius in—in _this_ , if he could," and Malfoy held up the hank of wool, "and then never let him out of his room. No, it wasn't him."

Harry raised a hand. "But do you think constantly being coddled like that might have been enough to make Scorpius rebel?"

Malfoy glared at him. "He was not _coddled._ He was given a lot, yes, including love. But I taught him to fly with a broom early on, and that's risky enough even when you're not playing Quidditch. As you should know," he added pointedly.

Harry _had_ got into a broom accident years ago, but he didn't see the point in bringing it up now. He only shrugged to concede the point, and added, "But do you think he might have felt bored in that kind of existence? Safe, loved, knowing everyone cared for him?"

Malfoy blinked slowly. "You had rather the opposite experience, from what I understand, to turn out the way you did. Are you saying that opposite childhoods could produce the same conclusion?"

"Perhaps they could." Harry shifted himself forwards and held Malfoy's eyes. "At any rate, you have evidence now that it didn't just start in the past year. He was reckless at Hogwarts, even if you didn't know about it." He backtracked a bit when he saw how Malfoy was swelling. That might not have been the wisest thing to say. He probably thought Harry was accusing him of being a bad father.

"Do you think that he's most likely to think about things more now?" Harry added, and added a smile, too, hoping Malfoy would accept that as the peace offering it was meant to be.

It made Malfoy sniff a little and consider him, but he finally jerked his head down and said, "Yes, it might. Although I do have to wonder, given this apprenticeship with you and his friendship with your son…"

He seemed to find the wool more fascinating than answering a question that he had left hanging, himself. Harry finally rolled his eyes and gave in to the temptation to ask more. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that part of his recklessness might be his desire to impress you." Malfoy leaned so that his elbows lay on the wool, and studied Harry with a frankness that was new to both of them, Harry thought. "And your son."

"Al wasn't that haughty, though!" Harry had to protest. He didn't want any aspersions cast on Al, although he was more than willing to take them on himself.

"No, but he had the reputation of being _your son_." Malfoy raised an eyebrow. "I know some idiots didn't want him in Slytherin, but he suffered less trouble than most other people would have done—a Weasley, for example—by dint of being a Potter."

Harry found he had no words for that. He watched the wool for a second, trying to imagine weaving in the spells the way Malfoy did. He worked in different ways, usually backwards from whatever curse he wanted to counter or duplicate, instead of forwards, deciding how he could enchant that specific material.

"I didn't even think about that," Harry finally said. "He was trying to prove something to me?"

"People in the center of the charmed circle have difficulty seeing outside it," Malfoy murmured, his attention now strictly on his lap. "And it wouldn't be the first time that Scorpius did something to try to impress someone else." He paused and darted his gaze up at Harry. "Although I wouldn't have said what he did was _reckless_ , exactly. Only a bit ostentatious."

Harry had to grin, trying to imagine what "ostentatious" would mean to someone raised in as much luxury as Malfoy had been. "Tell me?"

* * *

Scorpius halts in front of his father's study door and squares his shoulders. He tells himself it's stupid to be nervous. Father only hates being interrupted when he's at the beginning of a new book or near the end of an old one, and neither condition applies right now. He told Scorpius at breakfast that he's spent more time dithering and staring out the windows than writing in the last few days.

But Scorpius still counts three pulses before he knocks.

"Yes? Come in."

So that makes it officially too late to back out. Scorpius nudges the door open with his palm—legacy of Grandfather's habit of casting spells on the doorknob that would sting if _he_ didn't want to be disturbed—and leans in.

Father looks up with a faint, pained smile. He has more lines at the corner of his eyes since Mum left, Scorpius thinks. On the other hand, he also smiles more often, which he never did when he was trying to be the Perfect Malfoy Couple with Mum.

Scorpius can feel sorry for his parents' divorce, but he can't regret it. Not in the way that he knows Grandfather regretted things.

"Scorpius." His father nods and places both hands flat on the desk, as if he assumes that he'll need to push off in one direction to get away from the poisonous snake Scorpius has brought to visit. That's only happened _once_ , Scorpius thinks indignantly. "What is it?"

"Al Potter is coming," Scorpius says, which of course Father already knows, but sometimes it's simpler to start with basic facts and go from there.

"Yes. And?"

Scorpius squirms. Sometimes Father is more intimidating with one-syllable words than Grandfather could ever be with seven-syllable ones.

"I want you to see what I've fixed up for him in the ballroom and decide whether it's appropriate," Scorpius finally says, since he can't think of any other way to put it.

Father gives him a perfectly blank look and stands up. "Of course I'll go and see, if you wish it," he says slowly. "But why should you need my approval? And why is it in the ballroom? Surely Potter would have little wish to go there."

"His name is _Al_ ," says Scorpius, because he's already fought this battle and he won't let Father step back now. "You could sound like you think it's _him_ and not his dad I'm inviting over!"

"It wouldn't be his father." For a moment, there's the most peculiar look on Father's face, as if he's listening to old music, and then he focuses once more on Scorpius. "Where is this famous thing?"

Scorpius put his head up and stalks out in front of Father. "You keep telling me not to use the word _thing_ ," he says, feeling secure enough to tease now that Father hasn't said no _or_ said anything about making Al go back home. Sometimes Father makes unpredictable decisions, like letting Al visit, and then reverses them. "Then you do it. Why?"

"Because I don't know whether this is a device," Father says, not missing a beat, "or a presentation, or a show, or a pyramid of house-elves dancing on each other's heads, or a prank, or a book, or decorations, or…"

And he keeps listing possibilities, _not stopping_ as they walk down the corridor towards the ballroom. Scorpius finally has to reach out and press on his arm when they stand in front of the closed door. Father falls obediently silent, although he raises his eyebrows, and Scorpius can't figure out why until he murmurs, "I had the impression that this door wasn't often closed."

"I thought the house-elves would try to clear it away if they saw what I'd done," Scorpius admits. "At least until they knew I had your permission to make it that way."

"Ah," Father says, and turns his head a little so Scorpius can see the way his eyes glint, a pretty rare way. "Then _not_ a pyramid of house-elves dancing on each other's heads, after all."

Scorpius laughs, and the laughter lets him have the courage to open the door.

Father is silent for a long moment. Then he steps in and stands looking around, tilting his head back as if he wants to make sure he doesn't miss any of the objects Scorpius has strung from the ceiling. Scorpius lingers behind, unaccountably shy. Of course, he did hang those thin— _objects_ to make someone look up, but he didn't take account of how he would feel to have his father be the first one to do so.

Father finally says, in a voice that's soft with what Scorpius hopes is reverence, "And was it necessary to use _all_ of your grandmother's jewelry?"

"Only a few pieces are hers," Scorpius says defensively, because he might have been unsure that Father would let him do this at all, but he knew what would be the most likely to attract criticism, and look, he was right. "The rest are Mum's. You know, the brooches and rings and necklaces she left to me because she thought my fiancée would wear them someday."

Father nods slowly. Scorpius waits for him to say that those pieces of jewelry belong in the locked and guarded drawers where they're usually kept, not dangling from the torches, strung along the windowsills, and threaded through swinging banners of cloth-of-gold and cloth-of-silver. Even if those things show them off a lot better than they've ever been shown off by spending time in drawers.

Father doesn't, though. He just clears his throat. "I don't recognize the inspiration for the décor," he says, and gestures at the illusions that cover the floor, walls, and ceiling. Scorpius tried to cast glamours on the windows, too, but he didn't manage that. The glass has some pretty ferocious spells woven in to prevent tampering, and even though Scorpius knows it must be to make them survive breakage, he got annoyed with them anyway.

"It's Gringotts," Scorpius says, because he can at least explain this. "Our Gringotts vault."

Father considers the banners and the illusions and the jewelry again as if he's never thought about that. Then he turns and nods to the large pile of Galleons in the center of the floor. Scorpius is particularly proud of that, because it was a lot of effort to break through some of the defensive spells on various safes inside the house, and in the end he had to add some illusions along the edges to make it properly impressive. He waits anxiously.

"Is your purpose to impress young Mr. Potter with how wealthy we are?" Father asks mildly. "Or something else?'

"His name is _Al_ , Father."

"Technically, his name is Albus." Father turns around and considers Scorpius with a frown, and Scorpius meets his gaze as evenly as he can when he feels dizzy. "But I know what you mean. Still, I'd like an answer to my question."

Scorpius frowns. He thinks this might be one of those adult questions they think are the most important, and he doesn't know how to answer it, of course. Why would he, when they're always telling him that he has to be older than thirteen to really understand the questions? "I want to impress him."

"With our wealth?"

"Just…" Scorpius makes a motion with his hand in the air, and tries to think about it. The problem is, he knows exactly what he _thinks_ about the way Al Potter handles Potions ingredients and brooms and even people who want him to collect autographs from his dad, but the words always get twisted up when they come out of his mouth.

"Scorp."

That makes Scorpius worry a bit, because Father only calls him by a nickname when something important is either happening or broken. And now he reaches out and puts his hands on either side of Scorpius's head, gazing at him more in the way Grandfather used to do than the way _he_ does. Scorpius finds himself holding his breath.

"I think this is—a bit much," Father says. His voice catches, and Scorpius wonders if he has his own memories. "I think it'll impress Al much more if you show him the grounds, and some of the art. I've heard that his mother has a taste for art. She's probably passed it on to her children."

Scorpius glares at the pile of coins and the jewelry. He's mainly thinking about how much time it'll take to put it all back, and he _knows_ that Father will keep him working past the time Al arrives, if he hasn't got it all in place yet. "Would adding more illusions help? Maybe illusions of art?"

Father catches his breath again, but this time, Scorpius thinks it's different. He looks around the ballroom. "Is some of this illusion, then?"

"Of course." Scorpius points to a huge golden necklace with a diamond pendant hanging from a banner near the west window. "Grandmother didn't own something that big, and Mum wouldn't have left it behind."

Father's face twitches. "Of course," he echoes, and Scorpius glares again, because he knows when he's being made fun of and when the catch in his father's breath is him trying not to laugh. "But it's modeled on one your mother has, isn't it?"

"Only bigger." Scorpius glares openly this time, daring Father to say something about that. Scorpius just wanted to show off to Al, that's all. Al has so much to show off, and to Scorpius, it seems he doesn't have much when Grandfather was on the wrong side of the war.

"Of course," says Father a second time, but he continues hastily before Scorpius can get angry at him about it. "Well, it's a very clever illusion. Why not impress Al by showing him the spells you've mastered?"

Scorpius blinks. "But they're simple. Everyone can do them." He's always been puzzled by the way that everyone in Slytherin House makes such a huge fuss about glamours on robes and faces. Of _course_ they're simple.

Father chuckles and runs one hand through Scorpius's hair for a second. Scorpius normally hates that, but this time, he senses something is different, that Father has some point to make. So he waits, and Father tells him what it is a second later.

"Not everyone can do everything you do, Scorpius. No, not even the things that you think are simple," he adds, and Scorpius shuts his opening mouth, wondering as he does how Father always knows what he's going to say. "I think that your best bet to impress Al Potter, or anyone else, is to let them know what you can honestly do. And they're more likely to be overwhelmed than you think."

He flicks his wand, and the jewelry starts falling as the illusions unwind. Scorpius watches in interest. He hasn't mastered that much of a _Finite_ yet, but he can see the elegance in doing it the way his father does, one turn of the wrist and a lot of concentration instead of many separate spells.

Father glances at him and smiles. "Another thing not everyone can do is that intense focus. Maybe you should look into magical theory or spell-crafting."

"Concentrating is easy," Scorpius mutters. "It's what you do when you're writing history. It can't be hard."

He realizes what he's said, and flushes so badly that he's sure for a second that's worse punishment than anything Father can do to him. But Father only laughs and says, "You're so young," and it turns out _that_ is worse.

At least Scorpius is so busy protesting that he's not young and can learn anything Father wants to teach him that he forgets about the need to impress Al until Al actually gets there.

* * *

Harry sat back in his chair in silent wonder as Malfoy finished. He hadn't thought of it that way before. He had got used to coping with the fame when he was young, because he had to. He had shrugged a lot of it off, because he had to. He had smiled and nodded and chattered through it, because he had to.

Now he wondered how much he had missed, how many admiring looks were sincere admiration and not simply the desire to get close to him and earn a little of that notoriety for themselves.

"You know a lot about how Scorpius feels," he said, to break the silence that had gone almost uncomfortable, with the way Malfoy's eyes fastened on the wool in his lap and the way his hands tightened. "It took me years to understand my sons that well. You must be a great father."

Malfoy looked up quickly. "I notice that you don't say your _children_."

Harry snorted and shrugged, remembering passionate arguments and denunciations. "Lily was simple. You just had to engage to do what she liked, at all times. If she didn't like something or didn't want to do something, she told you. Al and Jamie were a lot more difficult."

Malfoy relaxed a little, smiling. "It somewhat relieves me that Scorpius became friends with Al and not Lily."

Harry hesitated, but Scorpius was still snoring, and Harry would know the moment he stirred or even took a hard breath. It was the perfect chance, maybe the only one, to ask the question that had been bothering him. "What about other friendships in our families? Do you think they're still possible?"

Malfoy's hands went still on the wool. He sat with his eyes bent downwards and his face drooping to follow them. He didn't seem to be breathing.

Harry didn't stand up and go across the room to clap him on the back, as much as he wanted to. He sat there and waited, and finally Malfoy gathered courage or whatever else had to be gathered, and looked up at him again.

"There's a problem with that," Malfoy whispered.

"What is it?" Harry was amazed how normal he sounded. This meant a lot to him, but he sounded even more casual than he did when he was selling some of his countercurses, he thought.

Malfoy studied him for long enough that Harry was sure he had seen into Harry's anxiously pounding soul. "I don't want a friendship like the one we had in our eighth year at Hogwarts," he said.

Harry frowned, and knew there was no way he could conceal his disappointment. "Okay," he began, meaning to say they could try something else, maybe owling each other back and forth, or working on some project that would incorporate both magical theory and history.

"But I don't want that," Malfoy said. "You said, up in your room—" It was a good thing wool didn't crumple as easily as silk, Harry thought, because of the way Malfoy's hands were cramping. "You said that in eighth year, some things might have been glad of my touch. Things that weren't dragon scales."

Harry lifted his head. His throat felt hollowed-out, filled with the beating of wings, like a small ruby hummingbird he sold to keep watch over children in their cots.

"You said it," Malfoy whispered insistently.

"I kn-know I did," said Harry, and cleared his throat. "And it was true. It's true now."

Malfoy looked at him and held out a hand with a desperate rush of strength that Harry saw coiled back in his arm.

Harry took his hand and held on. Malfoy turned his over a second later, staring down at their clasped fingers as if he was trying to figure out whether he should shake Harry's hand or do something else.

"Yeah," Harry breathed.

He didn't mean to, didn't mean to sound that satisfied and _sexual_ , but Malfoy gave him a single look that pierced through a lot of defenses and which Harry couldn't have invented a shield to block even if he had a hundred years to work on it. He sat where he was and let the look slide through him instead, then waited.

Malfoy glanced towards the sleeping Scorpius and shook his head a little. He didn't lean in to kiss Harry, the way Harry had hoped he might.

But his hand remained in Harry's, and Harry had been right: there were people here who were glad of that touch.


	5. A Curtain of Silk and Silver

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the end of "China Roses." Thanks for reading along. Next week will begin a new one-shot.

 _Chapter Five—A Curtain of Silk and Silver_

"I want to show my father what I can do." Draco thought the appeal would have been more affecting if Scorpius hadn't immediately wrapped his hand around his wand, as though he was about to whip it out and cast a spell on the curtain of silk and spangles in front of them, regardless of Harry's opinion on the matter.

Harry smiled. Draco shook his head a little. And he had thought _Scorpius_ was in danger of reacting inappropriately. Draco remembered that smile, and he knew it hadn't meant that much to him during their last year at Hogwarts together.

This was something new, and fascinating, and it made Draco's heart beat far, far too fast.

"Then do it," Harry said, and folded his arms and raked Scorpius with a critical glance. "Those cuts don't seem like they'll scar, at least. The next ones might, if you do something else stupid."

Draco held back a snicker at the way Scorpius's hand immediately flew to his face. _He_ could have told Scorpius the cuts wouldn't scar days ago. But it had been pleasant to linger in Harry's flat, and listen to stories, and watch him cast enchantments, and know his son was in the best of good hands as he got better.

"It won't scar," Scorpius said, perhaps a little uncertainly, as he lowered his hand again and turned to face the curtain. "I know you wanted to enchant this one to counter the effects of the Diffused Pain Curse, Harry."

Draco winced a little. He knew that spell. A lesser cousin of the Cruciatus, it started a slow, steady ache that built up in your bones and didn't stop. It had been one of Bellatrix's favorites to use on Draco when he disobeyed her, and in some ways, Draco had hated it more than the Unforgivable. At least Bellatrix hadn't been able to hold him under the Cruciatus that long without a risk of killing him or driving him mad, which would have lessened her fun.

"Yes," Harry said calmly. "I thought the curtain could wrap around someone who was suffering from long-term pain and soothe them into regular sleep."

Scorpius nodded, with a faint smirk on his mouth. Draco considered telling him that it made him look unattractive, but he doubted Scorpius would believe him. Admonitions and warnings he took from Harry, he seemed to believe were nothing but wind and air coming from his father.

"Well, I had an idea about how to make it more powerful," Scorpius said. "A true counter for the Cruciatus."

"Even though you can't cast the Cruciatus well enough for us to test yet?" Harry straightened up from the slight slump he'd had in his chair.

Scorpius flushed. "I would only need to know how to cast the Diffused Pain Curse for this," he said. Draco shook his head a little. Scorpius was lucky Harry found him endearing, because Draco could catch the glimpses of an arrogance in his words that a lot of people wouldn't have tolerated. "But the effect will be strong enough to take care of the Cruciatus as _well_ as all those spells that are lesser than it is!"

Harry sat forwards and shook his head a little. "Think about the theory, Scorpius."

Scorpius leaped and spun around to face Harry. Draco thought of what would happen to his knees if _he'd_ done that, and sighed a little. _To be young again…_

On the other hand, when he was Scorpius's age, he had probably been a bigger prat than Scorpius could ever be. Scorpius could endanger his own life, but Draco had endangered other people's.

"I know all about the bloody theory!" Scorpius snapped. "The fact _is,_ I know exactly what I can do with this spell, and I've spent all that time you confined me to bed _studying!_ I know that you're not supposed to be able to use something to block both the Cruciatus and the Diffused Pain Curse, but I can! It's all about the power that you put behind the spell," he added, seeming to calm down as Draco watched. "I know you won't put your full power behind the spell for some reason—"

"I think my shop and flat have enough windows."

Scorpius hesitated, but went on a second later. "But I have power on a different level from you. You said so yourself."

Draco wanted to slap a hand over his face, but he refrained. This was his too-talented, too-clever son. He might be right. Draco didn't know enough about defensive magical theory to contradict him and say he wasn't.

And if he wasn't, better that he learn from his mistakes and get some of the energy out of his system now, before it could have consequences in the real world.

"You do." Harry's face was unreadable. "Let me just set up a few protections in case the spells have backlash." He raised his wand.

"I know what I can handle!" Scorpius braced his feet and puffed his chest out.

"Protections for your father and me, is what I meant," Harry said dryly, and flicked a spell into being that Draco had never seen before. Silvery, transparent replicas of the curtain Scorpius wanted to cast on rose from the floor around them. They wavered and twisted like smoke.

Draco reached out a hand. As he had already suspected, even though he'd wanted to see it for himself, the curtain grew brighter and brighter as his hand neared it, and then glowed. Draco could feel the magic hanging around it stinging his palm.

He knew the tenor and tone of Scorpius's magic, even if he didn't know all the things Scorpius could do with it, or whether he was right or wrong about this particular application. And Harry's magic was…more than that.

Not necessarily more powerful. Scorpius might have more raw strength. But Harry's strength was no longer raw. It was hot and gleaming and powerful, a tempered sword against the piece of hot iron Scorpius had on the forge.

Draco settled his hand beside him again, and saw Harry studying him. Draco bowed his head and flipped his other hand up in acknowledgment. He knew Harry wouldn't do something that might allow anyone to get hurt, and so Scorpius had Draco's permission—as if he needed it—to conduct his little test.

Harry nodded and turned to Scorpius. "Remember that you also have to leave the curtain intact if the spell's going to work."

"Of _course_ I know that," Scorpius said, and then he faced the curtain with an expression of determination on his face. Draco watched him with love and pride and not a little apprehension, and saw the way his lips tightened, his muscles coiled as if he was drawing in strength around himself.

It reminded him of a time when Scorpius had been even younger, before he had chosen this apprenticeship with Harry and picked something that would focus his energies, and that was on his mind as the first rings of the spell spread out from Scorpius's wand.

* * *

Scorpius slumps low in his chair and stares at his boots. It's preferable to looking at the Headmistress's face, anyway.

"Would you like to know how long it took me to re-Transfigure Miss Windowweir's books?" McGonagall asks, her focus on the china teacup in front of her that was a squirming Howler until a moment ago.

Scorpius winces and keeps silent. He wants to say that his father will pay for the books, but then again, he doesn't need to if McGonagall has already transformed them back from the squirming snakes that Scorpius turned them into. So he stays quiet, and McGonagall suddenly turns her head and focuses on her Floo, which she wouldn't have done if Scorpius was talking, so he feels right in his decision.

"Ah," McGonagall says, and nods. "I think this is your father arriving."

Of _course_ it is, she would have been stupid to think otherwise, and Scorpius really does almost say that, until the flames part around his father's robes and he strides out of the Floo into the Headmistress's office.

His voice is calm when he greets her. His eyes, considering Scorpius, are like frosty stars drifting in space. They have no amusement about them at all.

Scorpius locks his hands between his knees. He is _not_ going to shake. He might have done something wrong, but it was just a too-powerful application of magical theory, and it's not like it really had bad consequences! The snakes he created didn't bite anyone. They're already books again. McGonagall said so.

Now that he thinks about it, Scorpius isn't sure why his father even sent him a Howler, or came at all. The Howler was sort of incoherent, shouting about how he should have proper respect for the Malfoy name. But Windowweir is from a minor family that has no alliances with his people, as far as Scorpius knows, and there's no one among them who's an Auror or in a powerful position in the Ministry, either. The name is unusual enough—and Cindy Windowweir is annoying enough—that Scorpius knows he would have remembered.

Father strides around the desk and sits in the chair beside Scorpius. He's doing that thing where one side of the room doesn't exist for him, and that side is the one including Scorpius. He nods to McGonagall. "Yes, Headmistress?"

"I know you've already heard about what your son has done," McGonagall says, and considers the teacup that was the Howler again. "But you may not have heard that I repaired the damage."

"Transfiguration?"

Scorpius wants to explode. Of _course_ Transfiguration! What did he use, and what kind of spells was McGonagall famous for before she became Headmistress, anyway?

"Yes." McGonagall smiles a little. "One of the books will have a scale pattern on the cover for a day or so. But it will fade."

"Good. I'm glad no one was hurt." Father turns around, and the side of the room with Scorpius in it abruptly exists to him again. Scorpius winces and bows his head. He wanted—he wants Father's attention, but not like this. "Why did you do it, Scorpius?"

He has wanted to give an explanation, but no one listened to it. They all screamed and ran away from the books, and then Scorpius failed to control the snakes because the potion that was supposed to give him Parseltongue abilities didn't work, and then McGonagall came around the corner and froze him with a look.

Now, the words he wants to use are hard, dry stones that clog up his mouth instead of tumbling out. But Scorpius manages to clear his throat, and bring them out. "Because I wanted to show people that I could create creatures I could control. Professor Julian won't pay attention to me because he has a prejudice against Malfoys."

"That sounds like a case for complaint to the Headmistress," says his father, without changing expression. "Or possibly your Head of House. Not Transfiguring an innocent student's books."

"Cindy is his favorite student," Scorpius says sulkily. "She's in Ravenclaw and he's the Head of Ravenclaw, of course she is."

"As I recall," the Headmistress says, startling Scorpius because he did almost forget she was there, "there are other Ravenclaws in Professor Julian's NEWT Transfiguration class. Was it really her House that made you target Miss Windowweir?"

Scorpius flushes and glances away.

"There is such a thing as courtesy."

Father's voice is as chilled as the wine he serves sometimes at parties and allowed Scorpius to help make for the first time this past Christmas. Scorpius clenches his hands in his lap. "She—she doesn't have as much power behind her spells as I do, but she _still_ manages to get better marks! _How_? Why won't Professor Julian pay _attention_ to me?"

McGonagall and Father exchange a look of the kind that Scorpius hates, the kind adults are always exchanging around him. They speak all sorts of words that Scorpius can't hear but knows refer to him.

It's sort of the same glance that Professor Julian uses, actually, except that Professor Julian usually exchanges it with Cindy Windowweir. Scorpius slides further down in his seat.

"If you felt you were being unfairly treated," McGonagall says quietly, "then you can come to me. If it is prejudice against your family, as you suggest, that is wrong, and we will try to take care of it. But you made no complaint. And in fact, Professor Julian made several complaints about you in the last three weeks."

Scorpius feels his face fire up. It's not his fault that Professor Julian is Muggleborn, and other people might have treated him unfairly. "Like what?" he demands.

"That you were late to class." The Headmistress pulls a piece of parchment in front of her, though from where he's sitting, Scorpius can't see what it contains. "That you hadn't done one of the essays, and didn't do the essay he assigned you as punishment, either. That you performed spells you were not instructed to perform in class." She leans forwards as if she expects her eyes alone to intimidate Scorpius. "And all of that was _before_ you Transfigured Miss Windowweir's books."

"Scorpius."

Father shouldn't intimidate him this much. After all, Scorpius is of age, and will be making his way alone in the wizarding world in a few months. Scorpius doesn't intend to lean on Malfoy money or connections. That would just provide idiots like Professor Julian right about him.

Scorpius clenches his teeth and turns to Father. "Please listen to me," he says, keeping his voice low. "That class is worthless and boring. Professor Julian can't teach me anything I don't already know. I might as well put my time into learning spells that will be on the NEWT's and studying magical theory."

Father looks at him, and Scorpius feels his defense withering up. Father shakes his head and turns back to McGonagall.

"It seems this has got much further than it should have," he says, "and it's an attitude that I should have nipped in the bud long ago. Do excuse us for a moment if you would, Headmistress. I feel the need to talk to my son alone."

Scorpius doesn't think McGonagall will let that happen, because she's a stern disciplinarian, but she nods with a faint smile. "Of course, Mr. Malfoy. As it happens, Madam Fairflax needs to see me about a rash of pranks in the hospital wing." She stands and walks out the door of her office.

Scorpius turns to his father. Father only looks back at him and says, "Why don't you stop making excuses? You turned that girl's books into snakes because you were bored. And you thought you could control them, didn't you?"

Scorpius jumps guiltily. "How did you—"

"There was a book on Parseltongue potions missing from your library." Father stares at him, then shakes his head. "The problem with you, Scorpius, is that you would rather sneak around than simply _ask_. If you had complained about Professor Julian's treatment of you, or asked for extra lessons if you didn't think you were learning enough in his class, or asked for help with brewing the potion and conjuring the snakes, then I would have helped you. Instead, you chose to act disrespectfully towards the professor and your fellow students—I'm informed that the student whose books you Transfigured is the poorest in the class, and if there had been no one who could change them back, she would have been deprived of books for the rest of the year—and then make excuses when you got caught. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Scorpius stands up. Father doesn't look intimidated, but then, he never does. He told Scorpius once that he got enough intimidation while the Dark Lord lived with him that he hasn't often found anything else frightening.

At the moment, Scorpius wishes he did.

"No one pays attention to what I know I can do," Scorpius says. "I _know_ that I'm stronger than Cindy Windowweir, but Professor Julian keeps praising her as the strongest student in the class!" Now that he's finally speaking, it feels as if a tide of poison is pouring out, and he struggles to keep ahead of it. "I know—he makes these comments that—he praises me, but not _enough_ —no one really knows what I can do, not even Al—complaining would only have made it worse—"

Even after all the words are out, nothing seems to be enough, until Scorpius feels a few more struggling through. "You didn't need to send a _Howler!_ "

Father waits through it all. Then he stands up and considers Scorpius for a long time. Scorpius thinks that he's going to be cursed with a Stinging Hex, something Father did a few times when Scorpius almost tore up a rare book or broke a potions vial, and braces himself.

But Father only says, "If you want people to know what you can do, then you need to show them in a _valuable_ way. Of course people will reject you if you only seem to be jealous of more talented students, if you show them disrespect, if you don't make any attempt to display your gifts because you think everyone ought to notice them on their own and offer you the appropriate praise. Do you understand?"

Scorpius grinds his teeth together. It seems to him Father could be a little fairer, especially when Professor Julian _did_ look at him like he was disgusted when Scorpius was the fastest to finish a spell one day.

But what Father says makes sense. And Scorpius knows that only one revenge will really make sense: to go out into the world and do something that will make _everyone_ sit up and take notice.

What are Professor Julian and Cindy Windowweir, anyway? Only self-obsessed no-talents in one small corner of the wizarding world. Scorpius knew he shouldn't let their attitude bother him so much. He'll go out and be _better_.

Scorpius nods, determined. Father smiles slightly. "Good. And you will apologize to Miss Windowweir and Professor Julian, and serve whatever detention the professor deems appropriate."

Scorpius blinks, and blinks again. His visions of the future didn't include _that_ particular consequence.

But the way Father looks at him, as mild and inflexible as McGonagall herself, Scorpius knows he won't have any luck in changing his mind. He scowls at the floor. "All _right_."

Father touches his shoulder, lightly, quickly. "You have tremendous power and potential," he whispers. "But you need to learn how to show it. And Transfiguring things that other people own for your purposes isn't one of those ways. Why didn't you Transfigure your _own_ books if you wanted snakes to practice on?"

"Because I didn't know if I would be able to change them back!"

"Really." Father gives him a smile that Scorpius has learned to be wary of. "Then it sounds like you do have some more practice to put in at Transfiguration after all."

Scorpius supposes he's lucky to be getting off with apologies, a detention, and a scolding from Father, given the anger expressed in that smile. "All right."

"I know you can do this, Scorpius." Father touches his shoulder again. "You just need a _goal_ for that power. Something that does _not_ involve terrorizing your classmates."

* * *

Harry shielded his eyes as he watched Scorpius's magic crackle towards the curtain. He looked at the small flashes that ornamented the outside of the magic flow, which were more important to determining its overall power and purpose than the flow itself.

 _Yes._ Scorpius had the weaves that signaled Transfiguration, the small ornamental waves necessary to pain curses, the—

 _Shit!_

Harry flung himself on top of Draco and pulled him to the floor. Draco gave a single harsh grunting noise, but didn't make any other protest. Harry felt his curtains flare, absorbing the explosion of magic, and only hoped they would hold.

 _Yes, Scorpius might be more powerful than I am,_ Harry thought grimly as he finally felt the vibrations of the power stop and sat up. _But that means nothing if he doesn't learn how to use it!_

When the disturbed dust swirled away, however, he was able to see what had happened to the curtain Scorpius had been trying to turn into a countercurse. Harry gaped for a second. He felt Draco doing the same thing.

Then he began to laugh.

There was no longer a curtain, and some of the silver lay melted on the floor; Harry thought all the silk had probably burned. But in place of the curtain hung a transparent replica of it, like the walls that Harry had raised around Draco and himself. It occupied the exact same amount of space as the curtain itself had, and shimmered in the same way. Harry knew without touching it that it would feel the same, too, if perhaps softer and more elusive.

Harry waved his wand to disperse his defenses and stepped out into the shop, still grinning. Draco followed. He was shaking his head as though to dislodge something stuck in his ear. Harry, meanwhile, folded his arms and studied Scorpius for a long minute.

"That was successful in a strange way," he commented.

Scorpius's face was scarlet. "Do you think—do you think anyone else can use it?" he asked weakly, and reached out to touch the curtain. He could move it, but when Harry tried to touch it, it was like mist.

"No." Harry smiled at Scorpius's downcast face. "It's still a remarkable achievement. It probably does just what you thought it would, which I didn't think was possible. But you couldn't sell it."

" _I_ can use it, though." Scorpius draped the shining stuff around his shoulders.

"Is that what you set out to do?"

Scorpius lowered his head a little. "No."

Harry shook his head in fond exasperation and glanced sideways at Draco. Draco was watching his son, mostly, but when he switched his gaze to Harry, Harry found it hard to catch his breath.

And the pride blazing like a sun in Draco's eyes seemed to be as much for Harry as for Scorpius. That was something Harry honestly hadn't expected.

Harry stepped back and took Draco's hand for a second, then nodded to Scorpius, ignoring, for now, the tremor of reaction racing up Draco's arm. "Then you'll work on the spell, and perfect it until you _can_ enchant a curtain like that and use it for someone else."

"Then you're not saying it's impossible?"

Harry grinned at his apprentice, and wondered whether he would ever have thought he'd be surrounded by _Malfoys_ and come to enjoy it. "I'm not. Let's see whether you can duplicate it, though. I'm not convinced of _that_."

He barely listened to Scorpius's argument about why he should be able to do it, most of which was mangled theory and theory Harry already knew, anyway. Instead, he leaned back and enjoyed the pressure of Draco's shoulders and chest against him.

When he sneaked a look at Draco, he found that Draco had dropped his chin on Harry's shoulder and was contentedly watching Scorpius. However, a second later Draco turned his head, without appearing to look away from Scorpius's striding back and forth and waving his hands, and let his cheek rest against Harry's.

Harry shut his eyes. At the moment, with warmth embracing him from behind and the side and inspiration breathing fiery gusts in front of him, he couldn't ask for more.

 **The End.**


End file.
